Earlier this month Buzzfeed ran an article entitled: Tech Confessional The Secrets Of Second Life. The article has a byline of:
“A former employee of Linden Labs, the creator of the virtual world, talks about walking in on users having (virtual) sex, being a Second Life celebrity, and why it was such an inspiring job. Also, furries! ”
Oh here we go, I thought, even down to the Linden Labs faceplam, but no, the article is extremely positive about Second Life and although its fairly brief it manages to capture the essence of excitement about the way Second Life broke through boundaries by allowing users to create the world … oh and walking in on furries having sex!
The former Linden Lab employee was a design lead on the marketing team and talks of how exciting it was to work for Linden Lab during the so called Golden Age, before that waned and he eventually left to form his own company in 2010, but he has no regrets and still feels Second Life is a wonderful concept.
There’s also a comment from former Linden, Jeska, in the comments section, who also still sounds positive about Second Life. The shift in culture at Linden Lab seems to coincide with growth, or aims at growth, you do get the sense that some of the fun left the building as the company matured but that’s really not unusual, more bosses, more procedures, more meetings, more focus.
The thing is, the only Linden who seems to talk to the media is Rodvik and whereas that’s good, he talks to the media in places other than the Second Life blog.
Now Linden Lab did try something along these lines before, such as meeting Jeska Linden or a video interview with Cyn Linden. These seem to have been driven by Courtney Linden and they worked well but Linden Lab seemed to lose interest in the concept.
They also used to blog about Second Life Press highlights, to be fair they do still link to articles on the Linden Lab press page but most Second Life users don’t go to the Linden Lab site… maybe they should have a link to it from our dashboards or the forum, or even the blog.
Hearing the Lindens speak or give interviews keeps us in the loop, we’ll talk about those interviews across various mediums, I’m not sure why Linden Lab are so reluctant to communicate these days, even one way communication is better than no communication.
It’s the old chestnut, and unlikely to change. I’ve been informed that there are only three voices at the Lab who xpeak “officially” – one of them being Rod humble (no surprise there); and that even when speaking ayt UG meetings, the front-facing LL staff are to be regarded as expression “opinion” rather than anything amounting to official aims, goals or policy unless they are quoting existing policy. Hence why many at UG meetings are unwilling to talk beyond their immediate remit.
I’ve suggested the press release link to dashboards myself & directly to LL one two occasions. In both the idea seemed to be received positively – but nothing happened (rather like ensuring Grid Status updates appear in the viewer splash screen has been positively received on no fewer than four occasions since the new layout there appeared – and nothing has happened).
Again, part of the problem here is that LL seem to compatmentalise PR and news to a high degree. Others (Tateru for example) have been told that only news affecting “the majority” of SL users will be actually blogged about and turn up on dashboards. Everything else goes to the forums (although how you quantify “the majority” is a mystery); similarly, wider news about the company marks unpassed.
I find the attitude odd, not the least because it encourages a huge amount of misconception and negativity about LL and the SL platform to circulate – not only outside of SL, but among users themsevles. How pathfinding was received being a case in point, with three separate blog posts (two of them well-meaning and based on what little LL *were* apparently saying) leading to widespread misunderstanding and negative backlash across the user base.
There is, however, a flip side to this. A major problem does exists with user-facing communications, and it needs to be mentioned in fairness to LL. It’s this:
We all to often taken everything as tablets of stone, and then set out with pitchforks, burning torches and lengths of rope when what was always clearly speculative “is dropped”, or that which has been indicated to be “long term” doesn’t materialise by the end of the following month.
Does that excuse LL for not communicating more readily? No. But it does help explain why they have tended to shy away outlining from long-term plans and leave it up to the likes of bloggers to cover.
I’d still very much like to see them come out of therir shell a little more; even the e-mailed newsletter (which I admit I wasn’t particularly fond of, as I’d rather they front-and-centre news and information as it happens via the official blog, rather than after-the-fact via e-mail) was better than what we currently have.
And damn you, Lord of Dee! :). I thought I was off of this old hobby-horse of communications, having ridden it quite hard over the last two years. Now I’m just going to have to go away and write something up myself, and I’m all focused on it again! 🙂
Users react negatively across many platforms, eBay, World of Warcraft and Facebook take far more heat but it doesn’t make them crawl back into their shells.
Facing a barrage of abuse is not nice, we’re making changes at work that next week will lead to my team facing a barrage of abuse, we’ve communicated the issue but the penny will drop next week and I know some people are going to fly off the handle.
However one good way of getting positive news about your product is to talk it up, it’s great that Rod Humble is so well respected and talks to the media and I admire the moves that seem to be making Linden Lab a stronger brand, rather than just being the creators of Second Life but surely someone at Linden Lab can contribute regularly to talking about Second Life on their homepage.